What are the Cafe's thoughts on Joel Pineiro? That complete game victory last night against a stacked Brewers offense was impressive. I know he has a paltry K-rate, and his career stats scream that this year is an outlier, but he's inducing groundballs like no other this year, and the folks over at Fangraphs think it might be sustainable. There's a lot of value to be had with a guy on a contender who has impeccable control and can deliver a steady stream of wins and innings.

After an analysis of recent pitchers who have markedly improved their GB rate from one year to the next:

All of which is to say that if the pitcher can show such improvement in causing groundballs, then the improvement is most likely legitimate rather than a sample size fluke. So what’s the improved part of Pineiro’s game? His fastballs.

For one, Gameday is now classifying a large chunk of Pineiro’s fastballs as two-seamers, which seems accurate. Pineiro’s four-seam fastballs are also breaking in to righties more and ‘up’ less. Whatever the pitch is, Pineiro is giving batters of both hands absolute fits this season. Righties have a .702 OPS against despite an inflated BABIP and lefties have a .661 OPS against, albeit with a deflated BABIP. This isn’t the Pineiro we or the batters are used to, but I guess we’re stuck with this version for at least another year.